Those who can’t, give a “boot camp”
Hmm. I see where Chris Mooney says he is
giving a four hour “boot camp” on science communication to a group of graduate students and other interested parties. The session begins with an overview of the “theory” of science communication–why we must do it better, what the obstacles are, and how a changing media environment makes it much tougher…Then, the session goes into a media “how to”–rules for interacting with journalists, media do’s and don’ts, and an overview of various key communication “technologies,” such as framing.
Interesting, but one question that occurs to me right away is what makes anyone (including Mooney) think Mooney is the right person to teach anyone how to communicate? He’s strikingly bad at it himself. Really he is. Yes I know I’m not an impartial observer, but all the same – he is.
He could so easily have done a better job of “communicating” and “framing” last summer – he could have answered questions instead of ignoring them, he could have taken critics seriously instead of repeatedly trashing them, he could have admitted it when he absorbed other people’s arguments and began regurgitating them, he could have dropped the petulant whining about bloggers he dislikes in the national media. He could have said basically the same things (minus the trashing and whining) but done a better job of it – a less alienating job of it – a less piss everybody off job of it. But he didn’t. He just kept pouring more gasoline on the fire, instead. So in what sense is he an expert on “communication”? In what sense is he even good at it?
He does please the Templeton Foundation, of course, but then the Templeton Foundation is not what you’d call hard to please. They’ll lavish money on anybody who shouts that science and religion are best friends.
Update: link fixed! Sorry – was late in the day when I did this yesterday.
Update 2: Abbie has a very funny post on the subject, with a lot of very funny comments (which eventually become all-Pluto all the time, at which point I recommend ceasing to read).
Experts are often simply those who succeed in shuting up everyone else so that their voice is the only one or the principle one which is listened to. The expert has to tell people what they want to hear. The expert has to evince a total certainty that he (an expert is generally a “he”) is right: skeptics (and wimps) don’t make good experts.
Well, he’s good at getting himself published in high-profile places. Maybe he has something to teach about that. It would be a valuable skill (but of course, it might just be that he has a good publicist). With that caveat, I agree.
An expert publicist or an expert controversialist? I incline to the latter. The controversialist’s motto: Speak well of my name, speak ill of my name, but speak my name.
Mooney has not written any books or articles about science as far as I am aware.
He has written some book and articles on public and political understanding and acceptance of science, and I am told initially he was very good at that. However writing about the public and political understanding and acceptance of science is not the same as writing about the science itself.
How the hell can Mooney teach something he has never done ?
True, he is good at getting himself published in high profile places. As far as I know the reason for that is that he wrote a good book that was a best-seller. That’s a hard thing to teach to other people though, because it’s already the goal of anyone who plans to write a book at all, and it’s not something that can be done just by deciding to do it. It’s no good his getting up there and telling the eager grad students: “Here’s what you do: write a good book that becomes a best-seller.” The question is not whether or not to do that, it’s how, and nobody knows how, or else everyone would do it!
And in any case, Mooney has lost the ability to do the first part, and in fact seems bent on the opposite, and persuading others to do the opposite. He’s turned away from the whole idea of quality in order to embrace the idea of “framing” – which is in many ways the enemy of quality.
Basically he’s saying “Come to me to learn the art of being cynical and manipulative.” Gee, what a treat.
Oops – I fixed the link – beg pardon.
Can anybody please direct me to Mooney’s evidence that his methods of communcating science are effective. It seems a bit presumptuous on his part to be giving advice to graduate students, based on his personal hunches about what he “knows” will work.
I am unaware of any such evidence. He has been asked for some by many people. He ignores the requests, or implies that the evidence is so apparent only a fool could miss it. He certainly ignores the evidence that science writers who disagree with his approach have been successful in communicating science.
Evidence? What’s that? Sounds sciency. Perhaps I should write a book about it. /Mooney
Poor kids. I hope some of them have enough sense to tweak him about Global Warming just for the hell of it. I’d love to see him accommodate that. Though he’s more likely to pull a Behe.
No no you see he doesn’t need evidence that it works, all he needs is to have found out stuff about “communication” and “framing” from Matt Nisbet (even though he and Nisbet are no longer a team). Finding out stuff about “communication” and “framing” from Matt Nisbet made him an expert in “communication” because Nisbet is an expert in “communication” even though he too can’t persuade anyone to do anything.
Gee, ms Benson, you make it sound like an issue of faith. /snark
I left this comment over there; didn’t really expect a reply:
As a scientist and former science educator, I do have an question — namely, how much of the disconnect is from poor communication on the part of scientists, vs. poor comprehension on the part of the public? Most high school science classes are taught by non-scientists — by people with degrees in education, for example. As a result, the general public doesn’t understand enough basic science to have any idea what most research scientists are even working on, much less what the ramifications are. No amount of tact and eruditon on the scientists’ part can overcome this lack of basic education.